The best FA that I think we have a chance to sign is Brook Lopez. The Nets want to sign Howard and Willliams, and perhaps Lopez will be the odd man out. Would he and LA make a nice duo? We'd have 3/5ths of a very good lineup.
To what end? Adding Lopez to this tire-fire still doesn't get this team any closer to being competitive in my opinion. He's an offensive minded big who struggles on D and doesn't rebound and overlaps with LA so much that there's almost no telling the two apart.
He's a restricted FA and will likely be extended by whoever is holding his rights. Aside from D12 and DWill, this summer sucks for free agents. We can stock up on either old (Nash, Ray Allen) or mediocre players (Landry,Nick Young) with this precious cap space the Blazers seems to covet. But wait, we can make the mythical "lopsided trade" that they always talk about. I'm starting to think that if they don't make any deals, Allen is going to look to sell the team pretty soon. http://www.hoopsworld.com/2012-nba-free-agents
So next year, this may be LA and the D-Leaguers?? I wonder if management would stand pat on cap space. Last time around, they wanted to throw it all at Hedo Turkoglu.
So our big rebuilding plan to use all this awesome cap space we will have is to land Lopez, Kaman or Hawes?
What you think is going to happen, we sign deron Williams? That's why I'm no fan of this imaginary cap space for free agents.
Me either. Cap space is stupid. And for those of you with the argument that we can make lopsided salary trades with cap space, please tell me what assets we will have to bring in these high priced all star caliber players?
That's funny because I had that same conversation with sly on the phone yesterday. I was saying, we need to trade our expirings for draft picks. If we had space then at least the first rounder can be used for lop sided deals. If we do nothing, we don't have enough talent to make a lop sided deal.
The Blazers need as much cap space as they can get to overpay as much as they have to, to get a couple of worthwhile free agents. Help us Obi Wan. You're our only hope.
I agree with you, the fact that mgmt doesn't want to take on any salary in a deal for a young player (like a Bledsoe) to potentially save cap space to overpay a guy like Hawes\Kaman is a fucking joke..... But then again the POR front office is a fucking joke...worst in the league IMO.....so go figure....
There's a variety of things you can do with cap space. Having a lot of cap space leaves a lot of options open, especially since you don't know what the landscape will look in the off-season. You could take back bad contracts with compensation like a cheap rookie guy or a high draft pick. You could take disgruntled stars by not matching salaries. Plus, there's plenty of good free-agents to go after. Sure, there's only one or two game-changing guys but in general, game changing moves are just extremely rare. You have to either do really well drafting, or find a team who's really desperate to offload a bad contract or a star that wants to leave. I feel like most people want that huge move that puts them over the top....but these things just don't happen without the stars being aligned. Guys like Chris Paul, LeBron James, Derrick Rose etc. only fall into your lap in the perfect situation. We had it happen to us TWICE in a span of two years. Sadly, both guys are (or are about) to be out of the league. Just our luck.
B-Roy I don't want the huge move. I just want the move to show us fans the direction of the team. If we are rebuilding, then fine trade our older players for picks. If we are in a win now mode, then trade the youth for aging stars. But for gods sake don't publicly announce that things are fine when it sure in the hell isn't.
But you have to have assets of some sort to deal for anything. It's rarer than rare that a team deals a star for nothing but cap space. Portland has nothing to send back other than Batum, and would the player we could get be worth eating up space? Batum is a good role player, but would a disgruntled star be worth giving him and cap space up for? Look at disgruntled stars over the years. There is a reason they are disgruntled, and it's usually that their coaches don't like them because they play no defense, or whatever. Plus, is a disgruntled star going to be happy in Portland?
The Bulls used about $15M in cap space to sign Brewer, Korver, and Watson. Some turned into S&T, but you get the gist. You don't have to sign 3 starters for it to be a win.
Gee, the reason the Blazers have shitty assets is because they drafted terribly and also because they lost TWO of their most important players for basically nothing. You can say cap space is worthless sure, but what are the alternatives? Trading away what little assets you have left? Acquiring expensive stop gaps? Either of those sound worse than just letting the guys expire and partially starting over with a clean slate. Most GMs suck when they make moves without a plan, as a result....most GMs suck. However, being a GM on a non-contending or non-attractive destination is really little more than just throwing darts at a wall. When you're making trades, picks, whatever...you're hoping that you get lucky and get a hit (Drafting a Kevin Love, Westbrook, etc. or having Paul fall into your lap). When you're ALREADY a contender however, that's when decisions get more tricky, and a stupid front office like Orlando or New Orleans fucked up their situation by making terrible moves. Now make no mistake, I don't think the Portland front office should be pardoned because quite frankly, they made some bad moves even when the roster was healthy. Still, right now, at least they seem to have a direction (cap space). What they do with it god knows but at least there's a lot of roads they could take. /cue posters with sarcastic remarks about our bad front office
